Not Applicable
This invention generally relates to sleeves to be used as containers and, more particularly, sleeves used to wrap flower pots containing floral groupings and/or media containing floral groupings, and methods of using same.
It is well known in the floral packaging industry to apply floral sleeves about potted plants for the purpose of erecting a protective sheath about the blooms and foliage of the potted plant for preventing damage to them and entanglement with adjacent plants. Such sleeves generally have an open bottom through which the inserted pot is exposed. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,333,267 issued to Witte and 4,413,725 issued to Bruno, and Australian Patent 42319/78 show examples of such open-bottom sleeves.
Other sleeves have closed bottoms upon which the bottom of the pot can rest. However, in such closed sleeves, the lower portion does not have a shape which conforms to the shape of the bottom and outer sides of the pot. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,235,782 issued to Landau, an unattractive void space is formed about the pot when the pot is inserted into the sleeve. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,388,695, issued to Gilbert, when a pot is inserted into the sleeve, the outer sides of the pot fit within the taper of the sleeve but an empty void space is left underneath the pot which must then be tucked below the bottom of the pot to conceal it. The basic problem in applying a closed-bottom flat sleeve to a pot is that in going from a two-dimensional flat sleeve to a three-dimensional open sleeve, the shape of the opened sleeve does not conform to the shape of the pot.
There are no sleeves currently available which can be erected so that the sleeve closely conforms to the curvature of both the outer sidewall of the pot and to the bottom surface of the pot, whereby the lower portion of the sleeve forms an attractive decorative cover about the pot reminiscent of a preformed pot cover when the upper portion of the sleeve is detached. The object of the present invention is, therefore, to provide a flat, two dimensional sleeve which is erectable into a three-dimensional sleeve wherein the erected sleeve has a shape which conforms to the shape of the pot without revealing unsightly extra material.